Lord, I Want to See You

“To receive in faith the gift of his Eucharist is to receive the Lord himself.” CCC 1336

I got a bit sidetracked with my blog posts, and I have not been writing about this year’s theme which is the Eucharist. I have been meditating about the Eucharist. I have been reading about the Eucharist. I have been receiving the Eucharist a few times each week. I’m even taking a class titled “The Eucharist: The Heart of the Christian Life.” But I have not been writing about it.

As I was doing my homework this week, a sentence in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) caught my eye: “To receive in faith the gift of his Eucharist is to receive the Lord himself” CCC 1336. One of the things that I have been struggling with is why is God more present within me when I receive the Eucharist than when I don’t. After all, God lives within me, all the time, not just when I receive the Eucharist. We were not able to receive the Eucharist during the pandemic, yet, God was still present within us and all around us. So what is the difference?

Yes, God is present within us all the time, but when we receive the Eucharist, we enter into His heart. And that is when our transformation begins. The Eucharist begins to transform us from within. Just like babies need food to grow, we need the Eucharist to grow in the Christian life. When we receive the Eucharist, we are so united to Christ that we can live in the world as His Body. When we enter into God’s heart through the Eucharist, the life of Jesus becomes interwoven with ours. We receive His entire life, human and divine. Therefore, the Eucharist helps us to become holy because we are in complete communion with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

St. Augustine said it best: “When you eat food you turn it into yourself. But when you consume this food (the Eucharist) you are transformed into it.” When we receive the Eucharist, we receive the life of Jesus. By entering into His own life, we begin to change from within. 

A large percentage of Catholics do not believe that the Eucharist contains the real presence of Jesus in body and blood. They think that it’s just a symbol. It is truly a mystery that is hard to comprehend, and it has been a cause of much division in the Church throughout the ages, thus the reason why there are so many different denominations within the Christian Church. But if we truly believe that Jesus came, and that He was able to perform miracles by simply saying a word, then why would it be so different that He truly could turn bread and wine into His Body and Blood. When Jesus speaks, miracles happen. When He told Lazarus who was dead in a tomb to come out, a miracle took place and Lazarus was resurrected. Therefore when He holds a piece of bread and He says “this is my body,” a miracle takes place and that piece of bread turns into His Body through the creative power of His voice. He also turned water into wine at the wedding in Cana, so He can definitely turn wine into His blood. 

Under the appearance of bread and wine, He performs a miracle so that we can consume His Body and Blood in an unbloody manner. We are not literally taking human flesh and blood, but we consume the substantial reality which is truly His flesh and blood. It is a miraculous gift that Jesus has given us, bread from heaven, that we can actually consume in a pleasant way. I for one I’m very happy that I get to consume His body and blood within a pristine white host.

When Jesus instituted the Eucharist during the Last Supper, He said “Do this in memory of me.” He gave the authority to His disciples to perform the same miracle by saying the same words He taught them at the Last Supper, and thus through apostolic succession, we can now receive this miraculous gift from our priests who act in persona Christi (in the person of Christ) when they celebrate mass. The disciples and their successors have been breaking bread and transforming it into the Eucharist for over 2,000 years since the Last Supper. 

When we receive the Eucharist we not only become one with Christ but also with one another as members of His body. It brings us into union with other Christians. Paul realized this when he said that by persecuting Christians, he was persecuting Christ himself. 

I believe in miracles, and even though I cannot see the host turning into flesh and blood with my eyes, I believe with the eyes of faith. At every mass, I pray: “Lord, I want to see You with the eyes of my heart. Help me to always believe that You are truly present body, blood, soul and divinity in the Blessed Eucharist. And if I ever doubt, please help my unbelief.”

Copyright © 2024 Christy Romero. All rights reserved.